I already wrote a blog of sorts on Facebook after his death December 6. But I haven't really been able to process it.
I stuttered through possible remembrance thoughts at all hours, day and night. And I ran through some of the things I liked best about Peter, who I hired as my chief music writer after old Jay Orr left The Tennessean for ventures that ended up with him in the deserved and honored position of Grand Old Man at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
This isn't about Jay, though I really love that guy, and he served well as a journalist on my staff at the old Nashville Banner and then The Tennessean. He took his glorious knowledge and kindness with him to the CMHOF and M. He is a great man who has made a huge impact on me, personally, and on his colleagues, the music world and his family.
About eight years ago, Peter packed up his desk at The Tennessean and joined Jay at the Hall of Fame. It was his dream job. He wasn't writing much any more, but he was hanging out with visiting dignitaries like Bill Anderson and Tom T. Hall and Joe Walsh and Albert Pujols and working with nice guys like Jay Orr.
My favorite quote from a Jay Orr story came early on in Garth Brooks' meteoric rise, Garth, who I actually like, talked about some big honor he'd won, and how he went home with then-wife Sandy to their Goodlettsville home to celebrate. "Sandy and I balled all night," Jay quoted Garth. Of course, Garth and his wife actually "bawled all night," meaning they wept tears of joy. Either that or Garth spent the entire night singing "I'm Back in the Saddle Again." It's a night he probably doesn't like to talk about with Trisha, though perhaps they ball all night, too, when she's not making cookies on TV.
The bawl/ball incident -- and no one complained, by the way -- was actually my fault. Jay, who was as diligent as anyone about making sure his stories were excellent and scholarly, turned this one in -- as was his nature -- right on deadline, if not later. I had to spin through 55 inches of copy about Garth in about 10 minutes. I read right through the bawled/balled miscue without a thought of its sexual content.
Jay was a great journalist and museum executive and I still love him more than most people I've ever known. In my mind, I saw Peter, who succeeded Jay at The Tennessean, similarly maturing, perhaps growing a scholarly beard, and becoming the next Grand Old Man at the Hall of Fame and Museum. After all, Jay is almost my age, and surely he has plans to step down and spend his time writing cowboy songs and polkas in his golden years.
Seriously, they loved Peter at the museum, although life began catching him by surprise in the last three years or so. It became obvious that he wasn't going to be the next Grand Old Man at the Hall of Fame when director or whatever Kyle Young and a half-dozen of his frat-style-dressed minions formed something of a receiving line outside Room 5 of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. They were all taking turns telling the fallen and frail friend, Peter, "goodbye."
I'd already said "goodbye" to my friend, several times over, by the time the receiving line got there.
Peter was forecast to die that day, or really the night before, according to the SICU doctors and assorted medical experts. But he fooled us. He'd fooled us a lot over the years. He didn't die on schedule. Sadly, the when is not as important as the what ... and he did die, after a few days of giving us false hope by fighting to stay alive. His fight came too late, when he was too weak.
Now, I'm not in the family, but I was there a lot during the four days he was alive in the hospital. Hell, on the Saturday and Sunday of his mortal stay in the SICU, he was even "recognizing" people, a little.
As my friend, I had asked him long ago to write the foreword to my book, Pilgrims, Pickers and Honky-Tonk Heroes, that comes out in March.
He wrote that foreword. He read much of the book, chapter-by-chapter, via my email dispatches. Then he stopped responding. I thought perhaps his interest had tailed off. I didn't realize that life was the problem.
Still, once I had it assembled, I had a full manuscript printed out that he wanted to edit. But he had excuses. And he didn't. I was not critical of him. Bobby Bare wanted to edit it, too, and he had a copy, but it's a tough job. Hell, John Sebastian, Lovin' Spoonful honcho and a friend of sorts, volunteered to read it, too. He stopped, though, blaming dyslexia.
As for Peter's participation, it was clear, in sort of a muddied way, that he just couldn't do it. His mother died. He got sick and spent a couple of weeks in the hospital. And he had two or three bouts with COVID that required isolation, not hospitalization. He got divorced from the woman who loved him the most of anyone ever and who held his hands while he died. For some reason or reasons, he was runnin' like he was runnin' out of time, to lift a snippet from my good friend, Kris Kristofferson. Take it all, take it easy, til it's over. And now, it is.
On Sunday, December 4, I held Peter's hand, stroked his forearm, and told him how much I loved him. I talked about the book -- he loved my writing -- and about his foreword and how much I appreciated it. I told him that I was planning on having him play the guitar and sing, if he wanted to, during at least one of my book-signings. He squeezed my index finger and moved his legs and his left arm. There even was the semblance of a nod. Of course, it all was, or perhaps it just fueled, wishful thinking.
Doctors had said that when he recovered from the brain injury from what turned out to be his mortal fall, he'd be in good shape mentally, but perhaps his motor skills might be diminished. He may not be able to work the frets on the guitar seemed to be a major worry. So, I figured maybe I could get my friend, Thomm Jutz, to join on guitar while Peter sang at a book-signing.
I was sure he was going to make it, so I was planning for the future.
I think he was, too, until the next day. Monday, December 5, he was still and struggling. He was not responsive to conversation. He was running a fever. Jason Ringenberg (yes, the Scorchers' front man aka Farmer Jason) stood at his bed and talked to him. Jason recited a long passage from Ezekiel. I rubbed Peter's hand and cried in my heart. I pretty much lost hope that night. He lost life the next day.
I had to call our mutual friend, Bobby Bare, to inform him. I'd been calling him all weekend. Bare wrote the preface for my book, by the way. I love that guy and it pained me to have to tell him that the fellow I regarded as my best friend in Nashville had not survived. I spoke briefly, tearfully, with our mutual friend, Nicole Keiper Childrey, who spent her share of time at the hospital, with so many others who loved Peter. I messaged our beloved photographer pal, John Partipilo. They already knew.
I dashed off a quick note to Kris and Lisa Kristofferson, as well. They also knew Peter, and they had told me back when their friend, Vince Matthews, died in 2003, to make sure to let them know when folks in the music community had died. It is a solemn honor, though tears drove my fingers as I typed the news about Peter Cooper to those wonderful people.
You may remember that Kris and Lisa delivered Jerry Lee Lewis his Hall of Fame medallion in his Memphis hospital bed, about a week before "The Killer" died October 28. It had to be a hard task, as Jerry Lee's friend Kris has endured his own medical struggles. But, at 86, he is proud and determined to live.
Peter's body couldn't measure up to any such determination.
I've been fiddling with this blogpost for more than a week now. I did post one, a mournful and angry lamentation, on December 7, the day his kind baby brother, Professor Chris Cooper, sent out this message: "There's no good way to say this, but I wanted you to know that Peter passed away in his sleep last night."
Chris wrote the note, and the gentlest guitar genius I know, Thomm Jutz -- Peter's dear, dear friend, who pretty much stayed at the hospital through the ordeal -- forwarded it to those of us who had been keeping what we had hoped was a life watch. It turned out the opposite.
An early effort at this farewell began with me somehow thinking the phrase "Thank you for being my friend." I think that's kind of a trivial way to say it, reminiscent, I guess, of the geezette sitcom "The Golden Girls," that ran from the mid-1980s into the 1990s. That comparison really doesn't work, given the fact that my friend was not able to reach the golden years. Frozen in time at 52 years old.
I've had a few days to think about it since Peter Cooper died December 6 in Nashville.
He had fallen and injured his head and his brain. And there was hospital-developed pneumonia. Nothing much else needs to be said about how he died.
It's just that he is dead. The day he fell on his spiral to death, he called me. He'd been MIA for quite awhile, a couple of months really. He hadn't answered calls or texts in which I expressed my worry and my love. My encouragement. He sounded tired, but he was "the same old Peter," and he told me he knew what he needed to do for his health, that he was fine. He praised his ex-wife Charlotte and talked about his love for his son, Baker. "It's all going to be OK, Timmay. I love you." "I love you, Mr. Cooper," I said.
(I've been calling him "Mr. Cooper" pretty much since I've known him, after an old sitcom, "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper," that was about a teacher, which was the world Peter came from, perhaps even where he made his biggest mark. He called me "Timmay," because of the "South Park" character. I'm not sure who really understood why we so-addressed each other. Course, it didn't matter.)
In that phone call, though, Peter said he was going to the Waffle House for flapjacks and hash browns. A pescatarian, he didn't think he'd try the fish there, if there was any. He did that, as far as I know. He was hungry.
But shortly after, some friends found him, mortally wounded from a fall.
Of all the friends I've made in Nashville since beginning the second phase of my newspaper career here -- I began with a 14-year stint at The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville -- Peter was at the top of my list. I told him often he was my best friend in Nashville, "and I hope you don't fucking mind it."
After I lost my job to corporate change -- I was "bought out" at The Tennessean 15 years ago -- Peter was one of the only members of the newspaper staff to keep up with me. The rest of them, for the most part, were very kind. But they had, it turned out in most cases, good reason to want to separate themselves from the outcasts. The less they knew about the folks who were kicked to the curb, the better.
Most would find out for themselves soon enough how it indeed does feel to be cast out on your own.
Peter and I spoke regularly, from the very first day I was out. For years, we'd meet every other Wednesday or so at Athens in Melrose (now gone, victim of Nashville-brand progress and greed) for lunch. He seldom let me pay, though I was able to rip the check away from him on occasion.
It had become the place where I'd meet interview subjects for freelance pieces, potential freelance clients and/or simply to grab a cup of coffee and chicken souvlaki or spanikopita (spelling?) while watching the wheels go round and round. I'd tell Peter to meet me at my office. Those were lunches filled with laughter, lullabyes, legends and lies.
I'd tell him the latest I'd heard from Kris or Bare. He'd talk about his adventures with Whisperin' Bill or maybe even Joe Walsh, the "life's been good to me so far," singer who is the best thing about the Eagles. Joe really does have that Maserati and gold records on the wall, Peter told me. And I don't want to be hard on The Eagles, especially since they took on young guitarist Vince Gill to take over for the lamented Glenn Frey. George Jones called Vince "Sweet Pea," I think for his wonderful voice that actually is at its best when he sings "Go Rest High On That Mountain," Nashville's funeral song. I'm going to settle for a recording of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero."
If a country music or roots artist came into Athens who I didn't know, Peter would introduce me, tell them I was the guy who brought him to Nashville from Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 2000, and that I was the nicest man in Nashville, a great writer.
Mostly, the thing that he said though was that "this is my good friend."
I pretty much stole the lead of this post with the "Somehow, Peter Cooper is dead" from the obituary my friend wrote for Johnny Cash. He had taken three weeks or so to craft the obituary, working full-time from his home.
You see we all knew Johnny Cash was ill and that things were not likely to get better, so our chief music writer was assigned the role of producing what became a full-section tribute when the inevitable day arrived.
"Somehow, Johnny Cash is dead," the lead of that obit, was also the best part of what was a sprawling, multi-faceted tribute to a great man.
Johnny Cash was 71, had a hard life, some of it self-inflicted, and he was older than his years.
Peter Cooper was different. He was only 52.
Somehow, Peter Cooper is dead.
